Blast at Japan nuke plant; 10,000 missing after quake

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1116108/1/.html

SENDAI, Japan - An explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant triggered fears of a meltdown Saturday, after a massive earthquake and tsunami left more than 1,000 dead and at least 10,000 unaccounted for.

As workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the chaos unleashed by Friday's 8.9-magnitude quake was an "unprecedented national disaster".

The quake, one of the biggest ever recorded, unleashed a terrifying 10-metre (33-foot) wave that tore through towns and cities on Japan's northeastern coast, destroying everything in its path.

In the small port town of Minamisanriku alone, some 10,000 people are unaccounted for -- more than half the population -- public broadcaster NHK reported.

Even as Japan struggled to assess the full extent of the devastation, the nation faced an atomic emergency as cooling systems damaged by the quake failed
at two nuclear reactors.

Smoke billowed from the Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant about 250 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Tokyo, after an explosion blew off the roof and walls
of the structure around the reactor.

Radiation leaked from the plant, but the government moved to calm fears of a meltdown, saying that the blast did not rupture the container surrounding the
reactor and that radiation levels had fallen afterwards.

Japan's nuclear safety agency rated the accident at four on the international scale of 0 to 7. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the
United States was rated five while the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was a seven.

Work to bring the situation under control was ongoing, to prevent cooling liquid from evaporating and exposing the fuel rods to the air, which could trigger a major radiation leak.

"We have decided to douse the (reactor) container with sea water in order to reduce risks as quickly as possible," Kan's top spokesman Yukio Edano told reporters.

Kyodo and Jiji reported before the explosion that the plant "may be experiencing nuclear meltdown", while NHK quoted the safety agency as saying metal tubes that contain uranium fuel may have melted.